[Aptitude-devel] Bug#661678: aptitude: Command-line install conflicts cause stupid resolution attempts

[Matthias Urlichs]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.5-1
Severity: minor

On a long-not-updated system where installation requires a Perl update:

$ aptitude install smurf-kde
## my metapackage which simply depends on a bunch of KDE stuff
[ attempt to resolve the non-existing conflict which includes: ]
206)     smurf-kde [Not Installed]                                                                           

Uhh, what? When I explicitly want to install something, attempts to resolve
the problem by not-installing that very package are stupid. Please pre-add
these to the exclusion list, particularly if only one package is mentioned
on the command line.

Also, I'm astonished that attempts to not-install 200 packages get higher
priority than updating ten packages.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (700, 'testing'), (650, 'unstable'), (600, 'stable'), (550, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  apt [libapt-pkg4.10]      0.8.15.9
ii  libboost-iostreams1.48.0  1.48.0-3
ii  libc6                     2.13-26
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.16-3.1
ii  libept1                   1.0.5
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.6.2-12
ii  libncursesw5              5.9-4
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.9-1.1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.7.9-2
ii  libstdc++6                4.6.2-12
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9-4
ii  libxapian22               1.2.8-1
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index                0.45
ii  aptitude-doc-en | aptitude-doc  <none>
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-1
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.6

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
ii  debtags  <none>
ii  tasksel  3.08

-- no debconf information